''Strict rules of evidence'' is a term sometimes used in and about

Anglophone Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...

common law In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omnipresen ...

. The term is not always seen as belonging to technical legal terminology; legislation seldom if ever names a set of laws with the term "strict rules of evidence"; and the term's precise application varies from one legal context to another. For the purposes of most criminal prosecutions, common law systems have rules about what kinds of

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...

can be considered and about how it must be presented, such as the USA

Federal Rules of Evidence First adopted in 1975, the Federal Rules of Evidence codify the evidence law that applies in United States federal courts. In addition, many states in the United States have either adopted the Federal Rules of Evidence, with or without local v ...

or the

Indian Evidence Act The Indian Evidence Act, originally passed in India by the Imperial Legislative Council in 1872, during the British Raj, contains a set of rules and allied issues governing admissibility of evidence in the Indian courts of law. Importance The ...

. These rules often disallow, for example,

hearsay evidence Hearsay evidence, in a legal forum, is testimony from an under-oath witness who is reciting an out-of-court statement, the content of which is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In most courts, hearsay evidence is inadmi ...

bad character evidence The Criminal Justice Act 2003 applicable in England and Wales, and to a lesser extent Scotland and Northern Ireland, implemented fundamental changes to the admissibility of evidence relating to character, in respect to defendants and others. Th ...

. It is generally these rules — or at times the most restrictive form of them — that are being referred to when "the strict rules of evidence" are mentioned. According to the ''Council of Europe French-English Legal Dictionary'', "(proof according to the) strict rules of evidence" corresponds to the French concept "preuve légale et formelle", as opposed to a situation where "la preuve de la cause est libre" ('the consideration (legal basis) may be proved by any kind of evidence'). A legal system may include different evidentiary standards for different kinds of proceedings, for example for civil and criminal proceedings, and these may all be referred to as "the strict rules of evidence" concerning their particular domain. The term ''strict rules of evidence'' is most commonly used to specify that they are not to be followed. The most common context for this is when a case goes to

arbitration Arbitration is a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) that resolves disputes outside the judiciary courts. The dispute will be decided by one or more persons (the 'arbitrators', 'arbiters' or 'arbitral tribunal'), which renders the ' ...

instead of to a court of law. Examples in UK law of proceedings not governed by the strict rules of evidence are "civil claims which have been allocated to the small claims track", and "hearings before employment tribunals". At times, the strict rules of evidence are used to define certain kinds of court cases. For example, section 11 of the UK

Civil Evidence Act 1995 Civil may refer to: * Civic virtue, or civility *Civil action, or lawsuit * Civil affairs *Civil and political rights * Civil disobedience *Civil engineering * Civil (journalism), a platform for independent journalism *Civilian, someone not a m ...

specifies that "in this Act 'civil proceedings' means civil proceedings, before any tribunal, in relation to which the strict rules of evidence apply, whether as a matter of law or by agreement of the parties", while section 134 of the UK

Criminal Justice Act 2003 The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (c. 44) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide-ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland an ...

defines "criminal proceedings" as "criminal proceedings in relation to which the strict rules of evidence apply".Adrian Keane and Paul McKeown, ''The Modern Law of Evidence'', 12th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 2, 305 fn 16, 704.

References

{{Reflist Evidence law legal terminology

See also

References